I have an email account I use for shopping and logins and stuff, which I've always had set up in OS X Mail, but the account was excluded when automatically checking for new messages. Of course it gets spammed constantly and I don't need to sit down and see 14 new email messages and they're all coupons or scams or Happy New Year from Acme Widgetco! or Hello Person We Are An Amazon Seller.

But I do need to check it from time to time so I just hit the check mail button as needed.

Is there no way to do this in Mail on Big Sur? Will I have to find a third-party app? Webmail's not great for me. If there's a paid app that works well with two accounts and does this, and it's reliable I could shell out for it. I'd prefer that to having yet another mail client. More than one is too many and already I have three.

Quote
Mike Johnson
I have an email account I use for shopping and logins and stuff, which I've always had set up in OS X Mail, but the account was excluded when automatically checking for new messages...

How did you exclude one account of several from automatically checking for new email?

The option in the General preferences changes the update-frequency for all accounts.

Been this way since at least Mountain Lion.

...

Edit:

Just came up with this: I guess you could set that account to be "offline" and then take it "online" when you want to check messages. Then take it "offline" again.

---

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/2020 08:14PM by Sarcany.

In 10.11 I can still check or uncheck "Include when automatically checking for new messages" in the advanced tab of Mail Preferences/Accounts. Super extra handy! The mail account is active but it doesn't fetch email unless I open the mail app, or do a Get Mail.

Forgot that existed.

Yeah, that's gone as of Sierra.

Is taking the account offline a workable replacement?

---

....can you do this to check for femail.....????

---

_____________________________________

I reject your reality and substitute my own!